Surprise, surprise! As usual, the media has been giving us the wrong dope.
This time, it's the intrepretation fed to us by the corporate media regarding the student "strike" in Quebec that has been going on for the past few months.
From the very beginning, our media, even the CBC, has
entirely ignored the details of the students' position, to the extent that most
of us, myself included, have been led to believe that they are probably
being unreasonable. Rebels without a cause, as Jacques Villeneuve called
them.
That's because, as the media has repeated dozens if not
hundreds or thousands of times, that "Quebec already has the lowest
tuition fees in Canada / North America" by far.
What the media has failed to deliever is a
comprehensive comparison of our tuition fees with those in other
countries besides the U.S.
I myself tried to look up this info and did find that
one or two Scandanavian countries have nominal tuition fees. But I
didn't readily find anything about our major G8 partners like France and
Germany.
Finally, a day or two ago, the following link was included with a CBC story (120 or so days into the student strike):
I also found another so-called comparison today ~ this
also looks like a "promo" for charging higher tuition fees, but the
reality of low tuition fees in may countries is evident:
So, bottom line, it turns out that the vast majority of
developed countries in the world have tuition fees that are much lower
even than Quebec's. Only the U.K. and a couple of other countries around
Europe have tuition fees anywhere near as high as ours.
It is a known and proven fact that higher tuition fees
work as a deterrent to low and middle class individuals pursuing an
education (everyone's "I put myself through college..." stories
notwithstanding)
So, what about it? Despite the extremely skewed
presentation of the situation our media gives us, it seems that the
Quebec students at least have a sound basis on which they are making
their demands.
As a sidebar, we already know what a failure the U.S.
profit-driven healthcare system is. U.S. healthcare costs being anywhere
from 50-100% higher than all other countries, yet their life expectancy
is substantially lower than Canada and many other developed countries.
Perhaps we need to rethink our approach to higher education?
1 comment:
Salaries of graduates who work as lawyers, doctors, optometrists, civil servants and engineers are also amongst the lowest "in North America".
As a professional, I was earning at least 30% more by working on the Ontario side of the river...
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